France’s Radio Nova just broadcast Egon’s exclusive Loving On The Flip Side mix and if you – like us – weren’t in Paris this past Saturday, you can still find the mix archived on Radio Nova’s podcast page. Included in the mix are a few unique companions to our sweet funk anthology, Loving On The Flip Side: in stores now.

1. Frankie Zhivago Young with the Boris Gardner Happening: Somebody Stole Your Love Pt. 1
2. Lee Bonds with James Reese: It’s Not But So Much Love Can Do
3. East Of Underground: I Love You For All Seasons
4. Soul Majestics: I Done Told You Baby
5. Patricia Denson and The Soul Expressions: I Thought I Heard You Moan
6. Jean and Donnella: Get Ready (For That Day)
7. Symphonic 4: Who Do You Think You’re Fooling (Pts. 1 and 2 – from Loving On The Flip Side).
8. The Prophet and his Disciples: You Fool, You Fool Pt. 1
. Disciples of Soul: Together (from Loving On The Flip Side).

Loving On The Flip Side - Sweet Funk and Beat-Heavy Ballads, 1969-1977. 21 rare and unreleased tracks; 2LP or CD with 80-page book filled with rare photos and each band’s story. CD/book, 2LP/book, digital album Out NOW!

Loving On The Flip Side collects the overlooked ballads from the flip sides of the funk 45s in the Now-Again and Truth and Soul vaults and is presented in the same format that we developed for our Soul Cal anthology. The music contained on Loving On The Flip Side is too damn good to be anonymously relaunched, decades after musical visionaries blended the best of heavy funk and sweet soul into a unified whole. Thus, Loving On The Flip Side again offers the enthused a chance to listen to, read about and reflect on another great burst of black American creativity: the creation of the sublime genre we like to call “sweet funk.”

It was the Darling Dears and Funky Heavy’s beautiful two-sider that set this record in motion, nearly ten years back. Those two songs precipitated the sweet funk genre: the dichotomy of Funky Heavy’s skull snapping rhythm section and the teenage Dears’ angelic harmonies didn’t sound like anything we’d heard before. That discovery set off a decade long search for the band and culminated in their discovery, the documenting of their stories, the emergence of their master tapes and the inclusion of their songs on Loving On The Flip Side.

The excitement we felt while listening to the Darling Dears and Funky Heavy’s masterworks forced us and the New York-based production team known as Truth & Soul back into the field, in search of other sweet funk swooners and beat-heavy ballads to round out this anthology. The opportunity to present anew such wondrous soul music made the exhaustive process that produced Loving On The Flip Side worthwhile, and allowed us to collect one-offs that escaped prior investigations into the deep funk and sweet soul genres.

Loving On The Flip Side is presented as both a gatefold 2LP and a CD – both formats come with a perfect-bound, 80 page book printed on heavyweight, uncoated paper stock. You can purchase the CD/book anywhere good music is sold and on Itunes. You also get Loving On The Flip Side as one of three albums if you subscribe to Now-Again Deluxe at drip.fm.

Now-Again is happy to announce the inaugural release on Orivious Records: the official, from-the-master-tapes issue of the most sought after sweet-funk single ever recorded! Out now.

Now-Again launches New York funk/soul researcher and archivist David Griffith’s Orivious Records with a masterpiece: the sole document of a lost and unlikely teenage “sweet-funk” collaboration between Rochester, NY vocalists The Darling Dears and backing band Funky Heavy. Originally issued in 1972, the record never made it beyond city’s west side. Today, this rare and exquisite blend of fragile female harmony atop an unexpected bed of raw, plodding funk commands four figures at auction when it appears in its original form.

Tracking the band and finding their assumed-lost master tapes took Griffiths the better part of seven years. In recognition of this Herculean task, we’ve spared no cost in assembly: the masters were officially licensed from the band; lacquers were cut directly from the original master tape by vet John Hull at his historic Musicol in Columbus, Ohio; test press after test press were rejected until near-perfect sound quality was achieved.

A limited variation – 100 numbered, hand made silk-screened picture sleeves – will be made available for a while supplies last; more details to come soon. Both of the Darling Dears and Funky Heavy’s songs will appear on the forthcoming anthology Loving On The Flip Side, which is scheduled for release in mid 2012.